Lowering Your Ovarian Cancer Risk Shouldn't Need a Subscription

This week, the New York Times ran a piece that could genuinely lower women's odds of getting ovarian cancer, then put it behind a paywall. I clicked, hit the wall, and did what anyone does in 2026: opened Instagram, where an OB/GYN had already posted the whole answer for free.

The headline is almost unbelievable. The most common, deadliest form of ovarian cancer, responsible for 70% of cases and 90% of deaths, actually starts in the fallopian tubes, not the ovaries. There's no mammogram-style screening for it, but removing the tubes in a quick procedure called a bilateral salpingectomy cuts that risk by nearly 80%, according to the study behind the article.

I'm done having kids. Three was always the plan, although "done" is still a word I'm growing into, since we're still paying to store our embryos. Watching the OB/GYN explain who actually qualifies — mostly women finished building their families, or who know they never want kids at all — I realized it's apparently a five-minute add-on if you're already having any other abdominal surgery, and a real option to bring up even if you're not.

What I still can't get over is that it took an Instagram reel to route around the New York Times, just to learn how to lower my own cancer risk. Information like this shouldn't require a subscription, or even a login — which is part of why Rescripted has never charged for ours. Women don't need one more thing standing between them and their own health.

The real breakthrough this week wasn't the surgery. It was a doctor deciding that information this good doesn't get to hide behind a paywall.